id Software and HardOCP have teamed up to help answer your hardware questions. We're publishing this guide before DOOM 3 goes for sale, so you will know beforehand what to expect in terms of gameplay immersion by your current hardware. We also want to help maximize the overall DOOM 3 experience for those of you that have been waiting for the opportunuity to upgrade.

http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0

This is a very detailed and helpful hardware analysis. Only annoying thing is that they touched on the 5.1 sound side of things but didn't give any recommendations.

excellent write up!

i dont have to purchase any new shiz just yet, i should just be able to scrape in with what ive got! (gf4 ti4400 (@4600 spec), athlon 2500, 512 ddr 400)

im happy with that!

Hey spook, ive got a Geforce 4 Ti 4200, i remember i tried to overclock it but for some reason i couldnt up the voltage to the card in the bios, im not sure why i couldnt do this, it just wouldnt let me, did you have any problems like this?

nah;
ive got a leadtek card its got some almity big fans on it

not much of a jump from 4400->4600 spec either

from memory 4600 spec is 300/600
4400 is 275/550

no volatge modding required!

last edited by Spook at 12:21:07 30/Jul/04

you can never up the voltage to a vidcard in BIOS. You have to get out the soldering iron and the multimeter if you want to play with videocard voltage mods:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?s=e41be052af90ae6b6efc761ffdd69408&threadid=28754

last edited by orbitor at 12:24:47 30/Jul/04

It only took about 10 seconds - the same time it took for me to realise they'd done ALL their tests using 8xAnisotropic Filtering - to realise that this 'review' is completely useless.

I'm wondering, I know someone with an Athlon 1.2Ghz and i know thats below minimum specs for the CPU but they've got like 1Gb or RAM and if they picked up something better than a GF4 like maybe a 5700-5900 to make up the difference i wonder how well doom 3 would still run. I would think it would be ok, but i don't want to tell him to go upgrade his video card if theres going to be no chance of him running doom 3 at a decent frame rate.

Oh true, i dont really know that much about overclocking, whats the best way for me to jump my 4200 up to 4600 ? It has pretty beefy heatsinks and big fan.

just download teh nvidia overclocking registry patch (google for it) and adjust away!

and see what u can get away with;

a 4200 wont go up to 4600 spec, but u can make significant improvements over stock!

why is it useless because they ran 8X AF?

for me this is actually a good thing because i intend to run every game with some AA and AF. i've become too acustomed to the crisper tectures and no jaggies.

jaggies hurt my eyes!

im stoked i just purchased my new vid card (i hope for next two years like my ti4600 did)x800 pro ATi is there any settings i can use to improve the colors? as my old card had digital vibrance is there an equivelent for ATI cards...cant wait to play DOOM3...

Excellent write up. Well now I can rest happy knowing that my machine will easily run Doom. Only a few more sleeps till it's out.

i dont think there is a digital vibrace equivalent. but really, does it matter. i used to play around with that too and it didnt really "improve" anything as such.

Going by those test results, I won't be buying Doom3 until after I've played it as what they claim to be playable isn't what I would consider playable.

Anyone know if ID will be releasing a demo?

Anyone know if ID will be releasing a demo?

They are, but not until after the full game is in stores.

It only took about 10 seconds - the same time it took for me to realise they'd done ALL their tests using 8xAnisotropic Filtering

Not all the tests were done with 8xAF. Only those where detail was set to "High" or above. Why? Cause that's what Doom 3 does automatically when you select high detail.